A Unisex Clothing Line Inspired by the Construction of Buildings

Seated at a table overlooking 8th Avenue in the New York Times cafeteria, the fashion designer — and formally trained architect — Aaron Jacobson admits that he’s slightly distracted by the view. But he returns to focus on the given topic, his unisex clothing line, Faan, saying, “I don’t really see good design as having gender. The gender-neutral thing was never explicitly meant as a political statement; it happened naturally, from the beginning. I’m not drawn to a red-carpet gown; I’m drawn to the proportions and shapes and construction details that you see every day,” here, he gestures toward the window, “and to me, my clothes are sexy because they’re thoughtful.”

Jacobson, now 31, spent “a lot of time imagining space” as a child in Cleveland, Ohio, and remembers being ecstatic when his parents gave him graph paper, which he’d fill with blueprints for dream houses. He studied architecture at Washington University in St. Louis and received his master’s degree from University of Toronto beforemoving to Beijing to work for a small Chinese firm. A half-year later, he accepted a post at a Danish firm in Shanghai, where he first tried his hand at garments. “On my walking commute from my home to my architecture office in Shanghai, I passed through the fabric district, an incredibly intense environment with so much activity and color,” he says.

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Aaron JacobsonCreditSarah Jacobson

Using himself as a fit model, he “became consumed by the thrill — the immediacy of being able to take a sketch to one of the studio owners in the morning, pick out fabric and then, after work, be able to pick up drafts.” Jacobson’s early sketches were more architectural drawings, the only visual language he spoke. (“I was even cutting sections through them, and blowing up details to try to explain the construction,” to the bewilderment of his pattern-makers, he says.) The pieces, mainly black and minimalist, “didn’t have life in the way that clothes need to,” Jacobson says; still, once he had 50 or so items, he left his job and returned stateside.

Specifically — to Cleveland, which was “until not that long ago, the second largest garment center in the country,” he explains, adding, “When I say ‘not that long ago,’ I mean until 60 or 70 years ago. Many of the buildings and resources remain there and, in fact, my great-grandfather was a pattern-grader in Cleveland. To tap into that history, and my own personal history, is satisfying for me.” Jacobson mentions that designers’ production chains typically go in the other direction, conceiving of ideas in the U.S. and outsourcing them to China, but he cherishes the relationships he’s forged in his hometown, and the energy surrounding his project, which he emphasizes is the only fashion label currently producing in volume in Cleveland, as far as he knows. He lives between the Midwest and Brooklyn and his collections are stocked at Akai Ito in Los Angeles and Reedem in Washington, D.C., and showrooms in L.A. and Stockholm.

Jacobson created a few capsule collections to develop his fashion vocabulary and officially launched Faan — named for a fabric-studio owner and his regular collaborator in Shanghai, Fan-Fan — for spring/summer 2015. “I’m playing with fuller silhouettes and proportions that drape from the shoulders and have a natural shape to them,” he says of the brand’s objective. “Whether I’m putting the pieces on an 18-year-old woman or a 60-year-old man, there’s a simple, honest logic to them. And, as I get savvier I’m seeing ways that an extra fold can be eliminated or how a topstitch can be used as a really powerful design element — subtle things that make the clothes last longer, touches that maybe aren’t standard but make a lot of sense.”

But Faan’s 14-piece, fall/winter 2016 offering shown here, is, according to Jacobson, “the first collection that feels lived in.” Unisex, of course, it includes industrial-metal-snap- and button-downs in varying lengths — including skirts. “Some men won’t want to wear a skirt, but some men are really excited by it,” Jacobson says. “I’ve made no effort to determine through marketing or in any other way who’s meant to wear what.” He pauses, laughing. “I look great in them.”